Volume 7, Number 16
Friday, April 20, 2007

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
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1. POLICE BEAT AND ARREST ANTI-PUTIN DEMONSTRATORS. Over the past weekend, truncheon-wielding riot police beat and arrested more than 400 anti-government demonstrators in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Germany, currently holding the rotating European Union presidency, condemned the police violence as “unacceptable” and the White House expressed “deep concern” over “heavy-handed” police action crushing the so-called Dissenters’ March. Surprisingly, deputy Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged some blame on Russia Today TV channel: “I think some over-reaction really took place, really took place, but their main role was to ensure law and order on the streets.” But he also played down the importance of the clashes and wagged a finger at foreign journalists: “Everybody accepts these actions were quite limited ... [in terms of] the number of participants. But of course, the very fact of these actions draws extreme attention from foreign media. And in the foreign media, a certain exaggeration took place, really.”

Western news media contrasted the turnout – about 2,000 unarmed demonstrators in Moscow on Saturday and 3,000 in St. Petersburg on Sunday – with the heavily armed 9,000 police and Interior Ministry officers in full body armor. “Several participants in the rally have been arrested for chanting anti-constitutional and anti-government slogans and using foul language,” a police spokesman told Interfax.

In Moscow, the police arrested Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and now leader of the anti-government coalition. He and others were prevented from assembling at Pushkin Square, the site of rallies against Soviet repression during the glasnost era. But by the end of the day, Kasparov was released and fined $39 for participating in an unsanctioned rally. In St. Petersburg, police detained Olga Kurnosova, the organizer of the protest and director of Kasparov’s organization in the country’s second city, as she was leaving her home to attend the rally. According to Interfax, she was arrested for a traffic violation. “The Christian Science Monitor” characterized Kasparov's coalition, called the Other Russia, as “a collection of liberals, leftists, neocommunists, and moderate nationalists who agree only that civil liberties are being snuffed out under Mr. Putin's increasingly authoritarian rule and that dramatic public action is needed to awaken society to the danger.”

In Moscow, City Hall had first rejected Other Russia's application for a permit to march at Pushkin Square but later agreed to let the group meet at Turgenev Square. Nearby, pro-Kremlin protesters, some 1,000 members of the Young Guard movement, held a rally unhindered by the police. According to “The Moscow Times,” the Young Guard filed its application one minute before Other Russia with the express intent of preventing the Dissenters' March. It received a permit for 15,000 people to gather at the square at the same time.

2. FSB CHECKS FOR EXTREMISM IN KASPAROV’S RADIO TALK. The Federal Security Service (FSB, the KGB’s heir) is checking for “elements of extremism” in the address by Garry Kasparov, leader of the Dissenters’ March, broadcast by Ekho Moskvy radio. Ekho Moskvy's editorial board received a request for a transcript of the broadcast so it may be examined for “possible signs of criminal activity,” the station told Interfax on April 16. The request also announced an examination of “Kasparov's calls to take part in the Dissenters’ March of on April 14, which could be qualified as a public call for extremist activity.”

3. PROTESTS SWELL OVER POLICE USE OF FORCE. On April 16, Rene van der Linden, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said that excessive use of force to disperse demonstrations is “inadmissible,” the semi-official Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported from Strasbourg. On April 16, a European Commission spokeswoman said that the commission intends to raise the issue of the freedom of assembly principle during the Russia-EU Permanent Partnership Council session scheduled for April 23.

In a dispatch from Moscow titled “Kremlin's Fears Fuel Brutal Crackdown,” “The Wall Street Journal” of April 16 noted “a rising fear in the Kremlin that it could lose control of its tightly managed political system when President Vladimir Putin steps down next year. The question now, though, is whether police clubs have crushed the Kremlin's critics or galvanized an opposition that has so far been splintered and ignored by the Russian public.“

RIA Novosti quoted Prosecutor General Yury Chaika as denying that the authorities broke any laws during the Dissenters’ March and insisted that police actions were legal. “We have no applications [on violations], we have received no complaints,” Chaika told journalists. “I don't know what violations you are talking about.”

On April 15, Vladimir Lukin, Russia's human rights ombudsman said he thought that the police “seriously exceeded” its authority in dispersing an opposition demonstration in St. Petersburg that day. “What I was able to see on TV screens gave me the impression there had been instances of serious exceeding of their duties by some members of the personnel of law enforcement services,” Lukin told Interfax. “I will be ready to give careful consideration to complaints from persons who were hurt and, if I consider them justified, I will insistently ask the Prosecutor General's Office to institute criminal proceedings, proceedings that I will uphold in court. I could see that blood had been shed on the streets. Fortunately there were no irreversible incidents.”

Speaking at an April 16 meeting of the heads of law enforcement agencies in St. Petersburg, Governor Valentina Matviyenko ordered a probe into alleged human rights violations at opposition rally the previous day. Lyudmila Alekseeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told Ekho Moskvy radio that the authorities were the only law and order offender during the Dissenters' March. Alekseeva promised help and support to every victim. “There is only one thing left [for the authorities to do] -- to start shooting like they did in Andijon [in 2005]…. It was the authorities who behaved like extremists. I can proudly say that no participant in the march resorted to violence.” She said that demonstrators who file a suit will be provided with lawyers. “We will appeal in every court,” she announced, including the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg “because we have a constitutional right to hold peaceful rallies and demonstrations, to express out opinion without resorting to arms – exactly the way the [Dissenters'] marches were held.” She added that a solidarity rally with the Dissenters' March is scheduled for April 26.

On April 16, “Kommersant” gave a detailed, graphic account of police beatings that also targeted members of the press corps. A reporter for the respected daily also picked up a dialogue between journalist Viktor Shenderovich and a riot police officer beating a drunken man in a ski cap. “Let him go, he's fine, he's just goofing off. He's not a democrat,” Shenderovich said. “Now he will be,” the policeman replied. “Well, that's true, a few whacks of your truncheon and anyone would turn into a democrat,” noted Shenderovich. As of April 18, 26 journalists have signed an appeal, sent to the president, the minister of interior, and the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg: “There are increasingly frequent incidents of journalists being unlawfully detained and beaten by police during public marches and demonstrations. Journalists present their identification, but when police know that they are arresting journalists, they treat them even more roughly.”

While disagreeing with the protesters’ program, Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov condemned the actions by the riot police OMON as “totally inadequate.” “Nothing can be solved in this [brutal] manner,” he told journalists on April 16. “The Prosecutor's Office must look into it and the authorities must observe the Constitution.”

Moscow authorities claimed that “there was no Dissenters’ March at all.” Nikolai Kulikov, the head of the Moscow city government's Department for Work with Security Agencies, told “Kommersant” that the march “was an attempt at provocation by a group of citizens, but, despite resistance and abuse, the police succeeded in keeping the peace on the streets of Moscow.”

RACISTS BEAT ANTI-XENOPHOBIA ACTIVIST. Racists assaulted Moroccan citizen Khalid Felukhus, a campaigner against xenophobia in St. Petersburg, after he stood up for two Tajiks whom they were beating, according to an April 10 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Sitting in a café, Felukhus noticed that three young men were insulting and then attacking two Tajik men. When he told the trio to stop, the Tajiks fled and the racists turned on him, beating him so badly that he ended up in the hospital. Police detained three suspects shortly afterwards but let them go. Felukhus, who publishes articles on xenophobia and has defended the rights of the beleaguered foreign student community, intends to file a complaint against his attackers.

CHECHNYA WAR VETERAN CONVICTED OF HATE CRIME MURDER. A highly unusual trial concluded in the Russian internal republic of North Ossetiya with the conviction of hate crime murder, a veteran of the first Chechen war, according to an April 13 report by the national daily “Kommersant.” Convictions of Russian military personnel for atrocities committed in Chechnya are rare, as are prosecutions of hate crime murders.

The case goes back to 1994, the year the first Chechen war began. Stanislav Eloev was standing guard over North Ossetiya’s internal border when he ordered a car driven by two Chechen men to stop. When he found out where they were from, he murdered them in an apparent revenge attack motivated by the death of his brother and a cousin in a clash with ethnic Ingush during the conflict between the two ethnic groups in 1991-92. Both of his relatives had been deliberately burned to death by Ingush paramilitary.

Threatening the Chechens with his automatic rifle, Eloev forced them from their car and shot them dead. Police detained him, and he confessed to the killing. But when he claimed that he committed the murders in an emotionally unbalanced state, he was allowed to leave the station after signing a pledge not the leave town. He immediately left for the Stavropol Region. For more than a decade, Eloev hid in plain sight from a warrant for his arrest. He signed up as a contract soldier in Chechnya, was severely wounded, and returned home. He lived peacefully for several years until prosecutors suddenly decided to arrest him a few months ago. Taking into account his medical condition and military service, the court sentenced Eloev to ten years in prison.

EXTREMIST CRIMES ON THE RISE. Extremist crimes are on the rise, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika told the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council. The number of such crimes, which include everything from hate crimes to calls for the overthrow of the government, jumped from 153 in 2005 to 263 last year, he said. He noted that the situation with racially motivated crimes was “alarming” in St. Petersburg and Voronezh. He disclosed that police committed 5,500 crimes last year.

DUMA TOUGHENS LAWS ON EXTREMISM. On April 18, the State Duma has adopted in the third and final reading the law that “considerably toughens punishment for extremist crimes and in fact equates them with very serious crimes,” the government information agency RIA Novosti reported. “After the law comes into effect, one may be jailed for up to six years, or even eight years (if the crime was committed as part of a group of people), for such an offence as hooliganism with extremist motives,” the item says. “Those involved in mass disturbances may face up to 12 years in jail (currently the maximum sentence is 10 years). The law introduces administrative punishment for those distributing extremist materials that incite people to commit serious and very serious crimes. They may face up to 15 days in detention followed by confiscation of printing equipment and propaganda materials.”

Clearly, “mass disturbances” include rallies such as the Dissenters’ March.

ALL IS WELL IN THE MARKETS, SAYS MIGRATION OFFICIAL. The new law banning foreigners in retail markets is working, though minor problems persist, Vyacheslav Postavnin, deputy director of the Federal Migration Service, told the official newspaper “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” dated April 16. He emphasized that while it was “not normal” that “representatives of other states seized” Russian markets, now “Russian producers and Russian traders” are taking control. He glossed over price rises and product shortages, and dismissed the problem of market shutdowns.

Postavnin complained that Europeans do not understand the new law and that “The law is constantly running up against opposition.” He blamed the shutdown of some markets on “appalling violations,” as the foreign traders “are dealing in pirated goods” – a phenomenon that “is taking on simply threatening dimensions.” He called the Cherkizovsky Market in Moscow a “huge abscess.”

Postavnin explained that market trading was chosen as the first step in a large, comprehensive scheme of national migration policy because “the markets had long since turned into zones outside the law. Criminality, prostitution, and arms trading were flourishing there. So an urgent imposition of order was required.”

Postavnin mentioned the possibility of an “explosion,” recalling the riots in Paris a year and a half ago. A balance needs to be found between the shortage of workers and the need to integrate them in society, he said, and suggested that the number of foreign citizens in major cities should not exceed 20% of the population of those cities. If the figure gets larger, he warned, “things may explode at any moment.”

RACIST CRIMES SURGE IN UKRAINE. An unusually high number of racist attacks took place in Ukraine in March 2007, according to a report by Vyacheslav Likhachyov, UCSJ's Kiev monitor. Racist and antisemitic violence surges during times of political turmoil in Ukraine and the frequency of incidents last month might well have been related to the latest political crisis that has paralyzed the government.

Likhachyov added new elements to a previously reported incident on March 3. In the course of a racist rally in Kiev of about 50 extreme nationalists protesting the presence of African traders in the city's Shulyavsky Market, one demonstrator held a sign reading “Stop Zionist-African expansion.” In addition, three neo-Nazis attacked a Chinese man who managed to escape into a nearby McDonalds where security guards stopped them from beating him.

On March 7, neo-Nazis attacked a Brazilian soccer player visiting Kiev from Vilnius, Lithuania. A dozen skinheads beat Glejtona Barbozu after setting off tear gas in his face. The victim refused to report the incident to police. On March 9 in Simferopol, eight teenagers attacked five Indian students at a medical institute. One of the Indians used a scalpel during the brawl to slash one of the teenagers; another Indian used a gas-powered pistol. Police denied that the attackers were neo-Nazis.

On March 16, hundreds of neo-Nazis gathered in Kiev for a “white power” rock music performance by the group Tin Sontsa (“Shadow of the Sun”). An anti-fascist youth was assaulted near the concert venue. Recorded speeches of Adolf Hitler were played as the musicians screamed “Sieg heil!” and raised their arms in the Nazi salute. The lead singer called out: “If you see a Jew, break his nose!” According to unconfirmed information, traders from the Caucasus working near the concert venue were assaulted.

On March 18, university students in Kharkov belonging to the far-right Patriot of Ukraine youth movement held a torchlight procession on campus. Marchers screamed out: “One race! One nation! Our motherland -- Ukraine!” University officials reportedly authorized the demonstration that passed without incident. Evgeny Zakharov -- head of the Kharkov Human Rights Protection Group, the country’s leading human rights NGO -- opined that the action was aimed at intimidating foreign students. He said that this was the third such demonstration and that violence against foreign students followed each march. However, the victims were too frightened to report the attacks to the police.

On March 21 in Kiev, Oles Vakhny, a participant in the March 3 anti-African rally, disrupted a March Against Racism. Vakhny reportedly threw bananas at the Nigerian pastor Sandey Adeladja after asking him why so many Nigerians are drug dealers. Vakhny then fought with a security guard and ended up with a 15-day jail sentence for “hooliganism.”

On March 31, Bangladesh citizen Abu Bakar was stabbed multiple times on a street in Kiev. Police are considering ethnic hatred as a possible motive for the murder. On April 2 in Kiev, two young men dressed like neo-Nazis seriously injured a citizen of Iran. Police detained both.

Government’s reaction to the wave of xenophobic violence has been mixed, Likhachyov reported. There have been relatively few arrests. However, the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, Vasily Tsushko, used his first press conference, on March 18, to declare that police intend to focus more attention on neo-Nazi activity. He also called for a law to disband organizations that use fascist symbols. Previously, Ukrainian officials have either denied or played down the threat to public order posed by extreme nationalist groups.

According to an April 16 report by the Donetsk edition of the Russian daily “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” a dozen neo-Nazis attacked Egyptian diplomat Khaled Nader in Kiev on April 13. The following day, according to the paper, a brawl broke out between residents of Kiev and four Algerian students; police had to intervene to stop it. Police spokesman Vladimir Polishchuk said that crimes against foreigners were not a big problem in Kiev and that on the contrary, foreigners are responsible for more crimes than are committed against them.

An April 17 report in the Kiev tabloid “Fakty i Kommetarii” contradicted reports of the attack on the Egyptian diplomat, claiming that no such incident took place and citing Polishchuk to the effect that the April 14 brawl involved the sons of Algerian and U.S. diplomats against three young men from Kiev. The police spokesman denied that racism figured as a motive. The article also claimed that an earlier attack on an Iranian man in Kiev was motivated by a conflict over drug dealing, not racism. It is unclear which news report is correct.

Over the same weekend, about 100 members of the far-right group Patriots of Ukraine held a legally sanctioned rally in Kiev, according to an April 16 report in the Kiev newspaper “Segodnya.” The demonstrators marched through the streets of Kiev, screaming “One race! One Nation! Ukraine!” as police looked on.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, BETWEEN BELARUS AND ZIMBABWE * * * “[Russia] is no longer a country … where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law,” opposition leader Garry Kasparov said after he was released from jail on April 15. “We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe.”

BRITISH TEACHERS DROP THE HOLOCAUST AS A SUBJECT
The Aim Is to Avoid Offending Muslim Sensitivities

Occasionally, there are serious studies of everyday subjects that read like parodies and make the reader wonder if they can be true. One such item is from London’s “Daily Mail,” by reporter Laura Clark, who recently quoted a study of British school curricula stating that “British schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils.” The study found that some teachers are reluctant to cover Nazi atrocities for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

The study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, examined “emotive and controversial” history teaching in primary and secondary schools. The study found that some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity because they fear Muslim pupils might express antisemitic and anti-Israel reactions in class. Authors of the study cited the example of a secondary school in an unidentified northern city that dropped the Holocaust as a subject.

According to the study, teachers feared confronting “antisemitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils.” The study added: “In another department, the Holocaust was taught despite antisemitic sentiment among some pupils.” However, “the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds) because their balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques.” A third school in the study found itself “strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict -- and the history of the State of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination.” The study concluded: “In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.”

“The Daily Mail” reporter also cited a dissenting opinion. Chris McGovern, identified as “history education adviser to the former Tory government,“ as saying: “History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable.”

The study also found resistance to tackling the subject of the Crusades that pitted Christians against Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem, because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques. The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history “as a vehicle for promoting political correctness.”

How about representing opposing views and shedding light on how history is written and how it should be understood? Shouldn’t schools be interested in educating students how to think about controversies and attempt to discover the truth for themselves?

One can only hope that the study will provoke a radical reexamination and shock the public and the government in Britain and elsewhere in the European Union, increasingly effective in developing common guidelines, into teaching historical facts and challenge misconceptions wherever they originate.

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